Art and Ambition

She was to bring him happiness and teach him how to enjoy life and art; and in return, he would cherish her, take care of her, always and forever – That was the promise of their marriage.  But the marriage was doomed, from the start, despite (or because of) the well-meaning intentions.

She grew up in the Midwest.   A gifted painter from a young age, she was known for her ethereal beauty and her artistic promise.  She drew and painted the nature and objects where she lived, in meticulously constructed splendor.  Her work resembled that of no other artist of her time and place.

Her parents, both from the bourgeois background, indulged their daughter’s unusual talent, to compensate for their own lack of education and interest in things artistic.  Unlike her siblings, she was allowed freedom to roam and day dream, whenever and wherever she pleased.  No one complained about her sitting there, staring off into the distance, doing nothing – she was actually busy in her head dissecting the labyrinth of life and things around her to imagine the images of her next paintings.  Not surprisingly, she spent a whole lot of time “being still”, while others seemed in constant motion.  When asked what she was doing there sitting so still, she would simply reply, “I am painting in my head…” 

She was a lonely child, by choice.  Her work was laborious, but time was of no essence.  She preferred to work in solitude.  It was necessary to concentrate her attention on the canvas at hand, thinking only about those inspired images, without the intrusion of audience.  For a while, she became indistinguishable from the work she created.  The final product was always less than what she had expected, but a miracle that it existed at all.

She had a cold heart, rough manners, and she wouldn’t compromise.  She was only curious about people and relationships as far as they would enrich her art.  She was one of those who were in love with their art more than anything else.  But her paintings were superb, and they sold well in her hometown.  Her reputation grew despite her mercurial personality.

She was beautiful, but she didn’t take care of her beauty much.  “If you are ugly, you are ugly; if you are beautiful, you are beautiful.  You don’t have a comparison.  But when beauty begins to matter to you, then you can’t do anything else except being beautiful: You are beautiful all day long and into the night, and soon that will be all you are, and all you can be.  It’s not a crime; it’s not the worst thing; and it may even be your life’s edge.  You begin to live in a dream world where everything is easy.  Think of this: If Van Gogh had looked like Cary Grant, could he have seen what he had to see, and have felt what he had to feel to paint those emotionally charged, haunting pieces?  Not a chance.  To paint those pictures, you have to stand in a distance, unknown and looking like a toad.  Art comes first, everything else second.  So, try not to make too much of looking good; because, if it was worth anything, why were you chosen to have it instead of Van Gogh?”  She was wise beyond her age about beauty.  But people would just laugh at her and say, “You take things too seriously.  Pretty girl like you, you can have anything you want.”

Commerce was always difficult for her.  She liked the money, but the process was deeply unsatisfying to her as an artist.  Once a woman bought a picture from her, a self-portrait she painted at a moment of extreme distress.  The woman paid a lot of money for it, because of what it represented to her – a statement of feminist grit, sort of.  She knew that the woman was projecting too much of herself onto the painting, and was bringing home an idealized image of herself; and over time, the woman would learn to hate it for whatever reasons, and take down the painting to put it in the attic, unless it would suddenly become valuable in the art market (then she would congratulate herself for being such an art connoisseur, making such a shrewd investment.)  She felt misunderstood and disappointed; she felt like telling the woman to save her money and go buy the stock of the art-auction house instead.

Her agent explained to her that she should not be involved in the selling of her paintings, those matters better left to the professionals.  The buyer was not obligated to understand what she was buying.  The painting was hers, and she had a right to see whatever she wanted to see, to pin whatever her dreams and nightmares as she wished.  As an artist, her job was not only to paint, but also to cultivate a branded, specific “public personality” that the buyers wanted to buy, as Andy Warhol and Picasso had done with their careers.  “Establishing a foothold in the art marketplace is as important, and must be carefully planned, as the drawing of the canvas.  If you choose to be mysterious as your artistic personality, you had better be alluringly mysterious, you had better be more Vermeer than you are now.” said her agent, “The consumers are buying the personality of the artist, not just her paintings.  They want to know you, they want to know your personality, they want to own you, and in return you get – adoration!  You owe it to yourself to give it to them, any works as long as they are alluringly mysterious…” 

She clenched her teeth, “I am a painter.  I am not an entertainer.  I didn’t choose a performing art.”  It was all too complicated – the marketing and branding of an elusive merchandise – that it gave her a pounding headache.  She figured she didn’t want it badly enough; she just wanted to get back to her work.

Then, in her early twenties, thinking that she had exhausted the material in her hometown, she decided to decamp to New York.  New York was where the new material might be, and where she could get her work done without interference.  There had never been a great painting made in the Midwest, whereas there were so many in New York.  A childhood friend who lived in New York once told her, “You don’t belong in the Midwest.  If you’re smart, leave.  Don’t wait until thirty.”  She moved to New York where she studied art at the Parson’s New School for Design.  After two years, she dropped out to paint full-time in her small studio apartment in Brooklyn, had few gallery shows, did commission works for individuals.

She met him at a party at his home.  He was a successful hedge fund manager on Wall Street; and she an on-and-off employed artist.  A month later, without any hint of love, he expressed his desire for marrying her, “You will teach me how to enjoy life and art; and I will cherish you and take care of your needs always.”

“Have you no sense?  You don’t even know me.” 

She wasn’t in love with him, and he knew it.

“You will grow to love me.” 

Before him, she could have never imagined a married life.  To her, married life was mysterious and better left mysterious.  It was better left to the married ones, who were the only ones who understood its ritual, rules, and ethics, or its deception and petty terrorism.  In a marriage, there was always the long-suffering saint versus the devil.  Quite a miserable life with all its hollow victories and hollow defeats.

But he was unlike any of the boring or sly boyfriends she had dated before.  He was kind and generous, a gentleman, doing a masterful job at something precisely what she had not been doing: building a serious and lucrative career.  One by one, he struck down her arguments against their marriage until she had none left.  She began to believe that there was no better course for her to take than to bring happiness to this man who worked so hard and seemed to enjoy so little.

Her handful of artistic friends couldn’t agree.  They were horrified, although none said so to her.  They dutifully came to their beautiful wedding, but soon disappeared from their life. 

Her parents were ecstatic about her incredible luck.  They flew into the big city, attended the wedding, joined them for weekends in their Connecticut country house, completely charmed by the bright light and luminous future bestowed on their daughter, “You’re burning with ambition, but you won’t admit it.  You want money, you want fame.  You’ll need someone to help you get it.  Now you have it.  Now is your chance.”  “But you have no idea what I want.”

Years later, she learned that her artistic friends couldn’t bear to watch what was happening to her – She failed to teach her husband how to experience life and art.  Instead, she became a handmaiden of his jaded palace.

Soon after their marriage, her previously aimless days of wandering and day-dreaming became ordered by endless parties, meals, and domestic chores, by managing the increasing responsibilities of maintaining two homes and the attendant details.  They was the dog which required walking and fussing over; there were the doorman in the Manhattan apartment, the guy in the garage who tended their car, the stream of her husband’s colleagues who had babies or birthdays that had to be shopped for, etcetera, etcetera…

Their life together was privileged and enviable, but something was rotten at the core.  Instead of transforming him into a dancer in the rain, she grew grim and unhappy about herself. 

How arrogant of her to think she could remold a grown man? 

How foolish of her to strike a bargain where love was unbalanced?

How naïve of her to believe that good intentions were sufficient for a lasting marriage?

Saddest of all, how could she let her role as a high-priced domestic eclipse her art?

How many times had he interrupted her creative fervor to do the cleaning, sweeping, and washing of the dishes at their old country house?  By the time they drove back to the city, she was exhausted, and her inspirations gone.  The curtain had dropped, and the stage was dark and empty.

“What would I have left to do after a life yielding to the demands of domesticity, with the vast assemblages and tender care of people and things it entailed?  Memory, scraps of my brilliant, yet disastrous artistic career?” she mocked herself.

Four years and one month later, they divorced.  Four months after their divorce, her ex-husband was getting married to an old friend, a woman who had been a guest in their Connecticut country home.

 As for the artist, she was adrift for a while, like a new-born animal in her new skin of freedom, shivering and lonely in the wind.  But the interesting thing about loneliness is it forces you to confront yourself.  Thus began the really hard work of getting back to making art. 

Did she solve the great mystery of love, art, and ambition? No.  But these days, she spends a lot of her time staring off into the distance, thinking about the characters and arrangements in her paintings. She is busy, happy.

Living with the Ghost

Ever since Eve got in touch with James of her 20s, thirty years later, she could not stop thinking about him.

She thought about her intense feelings toward him as a young man.  She imagined the lives they would have shared as an artistic couple – he would paint like a Picasso, Cezanne, and photograph like a Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton of his generation; she would write the greatest novel of the century.  She dreamed of making the trip half-way around the world to Taiwan to meet the onetime love-of-her-life:

                                        **********

They meet for a cup of coffee.

He is handsome now in the middle-aged way, thicker-set, 
slightly stooped, with graying long hair, more neurotic and
faster-talking than she remembers about him, same soulful
eyes and luscious lips, wiser and a bit tired.

She is pretty with graying long hair and small wrinkles, still 
slender and naturally elegant, more thoughtful and reserved
than he remembers about her, same luscious lips, her smiles
marked by one distinctive, massive dimple. 

The conversation between him and her goes like this:

“I think I started seeing you after your photography show when I was 19.  I was dreamy and clueless, you were charming and driven.  I survived various doubtful moments about our relationship because you were so sweet and genuine.  What I remember about you was your full mop of hair, your eyes, and the Greek leather sandals that seemed never to leave your feet.  You looked like a free-spirited Picasso, with a camera in your clutch instead of a paint brush.  You showed up in my life like the fresh air of spring, and you were so sensitive, so kind, so reassuring that I just wanted to fall in love with you, and I wanted the relationship to work for us.”

“I really enjoyed your company, and that probably came across…” He stares at her, trying hard to connect the woman in front of him with the woman of his past long ago, in the old black-and-white pictures he took of her.  He likes what he sees.   He likes the faint milk and honey scent of her.

“I loved school.  I went off to college to study history.   But once I got there, I became unhappy with the narrow, boring, dreadful Confucian scholarship.  I read translated novels by Virginia Woolf and philosophy by Nietzsche, and decided that art and literature had the answer to the questions that interested me.  I looked around and found you, someone who was unafraid of following his free will to become an artist, against all the naysayers of his times.  You were my love, my idol and inspiration.  It was a beautiful thing.” 

“I would move away and move back to Taiwan after you, but the memories of you always stay with me.  I still keep those delicately hand-written letters that you sent me the first year after we parted ways.  I’ve driven by your old house several times after I moved back, wondering where and how you have been all these years.  Your hand-writing is so alive that I could almost smell and feel your touches.  The old house is still there, giving only a glimpse of what could have been inside…Could it be you, your mother, or your sister?”  

“Oh my god, what kind of a man would keep letters of an old girlfriend for thirty years?  You surprise me!”  Their romance was nothing but a series of accidental surprises.  He was unlike most other people she has ever known.  But the biggest surprise is to find out that she would have meant anything to him after all these years.

“You were special…I am sorry I had let you down.”  He seems to hold back his emotions.  Those early years were complicated times for him - so much was going on in his personal life, and so little he could afford to confide in her. 

“My heart was broken when you left.  I always wondered how difficult it would be for me to meet another man like you.  I thought I would probably never get married.” 

“Ah, but I had married and divorced twice since.  And I had never set out to become anyone’s husband.”

“Well, I did get married to a good man, few years later.  We packed our bags, and went to America to start a new life.”

“How is America treating you?”

“It wasn’t as easy as I thought.  Do you remember high school?  Before high school, everything was so easy, I was coasting in my class and still getting good grade; in high school, I learned for the first time that I was getting a C in my chemistry class, and nothing was easy after that.  Coming to America was a bit like going to high school.  After thirty years, I am coping better, but not coasting yet.”

“I see your point.  I had lived in France for twenty years.  Challenges and rewards always go hand in hand together.  I wouldn’t know where I’d be creatively without those twenty years.  My French experience has expanded me in every other way.  It illuminates what I am doing now. It shows me the possibilities I haven’t thought of.  It broadens my eyes, enriches my heart and soul.  It makes me more human, it makes my life much more worth living.  At the same time, life there as a foreigner was a daily struggle, as simple as that.” 

She understands the life of a foreigner – free and alone.  The foreigner is free from the rules and responsibilities imposed by his old country.  The foreigner is lonely because he has no ties, no connections, no background.  Not until he finds meaning in his wandering, he leads a pointless sort of life.

“I turned to writing to ease my loneliness.  Writing takes me out of time and releases me from the pain of being myself, being a foreigner in those early years.  I write about my childhood to give comfort.  I write about life in the Northeast, specifically in the woods and hills and lakes of upstate New York, because it is home." 

“Can I tell you that I enjoy your stories about us (I think)?   They read like glasses of fine wine - timeless, smooth, deeply romantic.”

“I like your old photographs too.   They trigger all sorts of memories, grounded in the personal stories of our lives…like good poems, murky, mysterious, beautiful.  We live in a world that we explore, absorb, remember and forget.  You were gone - then my memories of you faded.  You were the love of my life - then I forgot you.  Thank you for preserving all those precious moments.”

“But I wish you had written your stories in Chinese, instead of in English, so that more Taiwanese people can read them.”

“James, I write in English because my English is already so much better than my Chinese, after thirty years.  Culturally speaking, I am almost 70% American and 30% Taiwanese.  Someday, I may become 99% American if I live long enough.  I don’t mind, for all the good things I’ve gotten out of living in America.”

“You have grown up…”

“I should hope so.  After all, I am thirty years older,” she says.  “Now I came back to you, where do we go from here, James?”

“I have no idea…I just wish I could be young again, and relive the dreams and excited passions like a child, like love.  Every time I closed my eyes, I wished you were here…”

Oh James, you haven’t changed…

                                        **********

Vicky, Eve’s older sister, knows Eve’s feeling all too well.  When Eve told her about her plan to make the long trip to Taiwan to see James, she warns her that nothing good will come of it,  “Eve, you are wasting your time.  If you go to see him, you will never stop seeing him again, in spite of your families and friends or his.”

It is complicated for Eve.  Rationally the more she knows about James, what he has done in the past thirty years, all the men and women who have crossed paths with him, the more likely she will be puzzled by his motive for hanging on.  Truth is that she really doesn’t believe him.  James is a wild cat, difficult to pin down, bound to be unreliable.

“Why keep his ghost around?  It is unhealthy.  I need to move on.”  But the fantasy of the unknown, re-acquaintance with a long-lost love is simply too beguiling to give up.  She misses him after thirty years of separation.

The choice makes her queasy - To chase after the ghost for one last blast of excitement?  To abandon the ghost of the past that never existed?

Fools!  Sorrow is the favorite sport of the ghosts.

Beautiful but Uncomfortable: Remix

It was 1973.  The setting was Taipei, at a photographic exhibition by the fantastic seven - emerging, avant-garde artists by the standards of Taiwanese people. 

The young woman was 19.  She came with her friends to check out the phenomenon.  It was the first day of the show, late afternoon; throngs of people milling about the room filled with large and small black-and-white landscape photos of dreamlike quality, whispering, gesturing, and commenting.  There was a smaller crowd of giddy, young people surrounding the seven producers of the unconventional works in another corner.

The young woman spotted the young man in black in the center of the circle.  The memories of that meeting seem so strange, so unlikely, so out of the realm of possibility now that she finds it difficult to reconcile the details with the two persons she is remembering.  He was soaking up all the attention from the enthusiastic admirers, exuding an aura of glamour and aloofness, and his handsome eyes floating in and out of the room, finally landing in her direction.  Their eyes met (she declared, “If someone is going to turn me on, that someone is he.”)  He was the star of her dreams, the fantasy she had held on to as long as she had remembered. 

She grew up in a very strict household, with a domineering mother and an invisible father.  The mother imposed her rules and expectations on all members of the family, her teenage daughter in particular: “You will smile and act pleasantly when spoken to.”  “You will not seek attention of strangers.”  “You will work hard to be the top of your class.”  She lived a sheltered life of limitation and cultural restriction.  The only escape was through books, books about the sky of many colors and different clouds, about adventures, about boys and girls journeying together across the world.  She often read herself to sleep, dreaming for the stars. 

Loving to read saved her from herself, at the same time making her rebellious and confused.  The brains and body of a teenager didn’t move in synch; sometimes she felt like Frankenstein in a prettier mask; she was told to behave modestly, but she had the darkest thoughts of wanting to attract the attention of outlaws, vagabonds, stray cats; she had raw talents, but undeveloped; she was hollow in the center, no identity, no direction.  All she had was the belief that she would find a person to inspire her, and as long as she held on to what inspired her about that person, she would be okay.

Liberation came when she went away for college.  She embraced the new world with abandon: She could take charge of her life, allow herself to fall in love, to forge an identity for herself.  The moment she met the young man in black, she knew he would be traveling with her to experiences of vibrant blues, reds, yellows and greens, the adventures she had only read or dream about.

The young man was a brilliant artist from an early age, the precocious only son in a high-minded, intelligent family.  The family understood his genius and supported his career choice despite earlier objection.  He was attractive, warm-hearted, courageous in his artistic expression, and wildly popular among his art contemporaries – musicians, performers, dancers, painters, writers.  They commissioned him with works, catapulting him to artistic stardom.  He responded by bringing celebrity culture into his own works – He hung out with pop stars and models, and he photographed them and their glamorous lives.  The press regarded him as the eyes of a new generation.  Young people who didn’t know much about photography flocked to see his shows.  Publicity certainly helped his career, but many critics remained leery of him who was introduced to the public with an excessive amount of fanfare.      

Like true artists before him, he possessed that surreal sensitivity to all things around him.  He wanted to be liked by everybody, but also yearned for a gypsy-like existence, no roots, no sense of belonging, roaming from place to place seeking myths and beauty, with his own imagination.  “This world isn’t enough.  I need more.”  He would pursue his altered reality in solitude someday.  He would travel to Europe and the Far East to see Japanese woodcuts, Greek god statues, Egyptian reliefs, Indian art and Byzantine mosaics.

It was hard not to imagine girls falling for this enchanting boy.  But girls were just his conquests, forgotten as soon as they were out of sight.  He was superb in his shift of roles from potential husband material, soulmate, to careless Don Juan, to exquisite dissolute in intimate relationships.  A legend grew up about how he was always going to be dangerous and tragic for his lady friends.

The young woman didn’t care.  She accepted the gorgeous young man… knowing he was cheating on his fiancé to be with her.  The lovers only had eyes for each other, however blinkered love could be. 

For the brief time she enjoyed his love, she was totally immersed in him, seeing his way of the reality, absorbing his absurdly serious habits of an artist, learning his way of making paintings and photography, taking pleasure from his genuine, unconcealed obsession with his process, enjoying the exhausting kinds of fun with him. 

His works were fascinating and detached mirrors of the culture surrounding him.  Because he was a painter by training, he approached photography always with a design in mind.  Every picture had a poetic message, and every image carried his signature stamp.

He changed the way she saw the world through his haunting, alluring images.  She was both intrigued and awakened.  She loved words.  Thought him, she discovered the person she truly was: a free-spirited writer who longed to explore and write about the mythical wonders conveyed in his paintings and photography.

They were only four years apart.  But in love-making, they were both innocent children tasting the forbidden fruit.  They didn’t stop making love for two days until she came.  There was nothing right or wrong they wouldn’t try.  When it worked, when they reached that state of ecstatic unity, they wanted more.  Even though they had their first fight, they made it up by making love all night.

The sensation of his passion for her made him want to make art.  He made his most amazing work of art during this period: a small painting of her in the nude as her eyes flashed at the climactic moment that one could almost saw it happen. 

When he wasn’t chasing after glamour and hype for his job, he took dark, heart-breaking pictures of death and decayed subjects hovering at the brink of despair.  Why was all this sadness?  What was he thinking?  She wondered.

She soon found out that he had a secret – His bipolar disorder.  He could be crazy, manic, rambling on and on about his loneliness one moment; then tender, wildly inventive, bursting with all sorts of creative impulses the next.   He seemed to be aware of his condition, but his fixation on keeping people around him safe was so intense that it overrode his craziness.  He was ever so vigilant about maintaining his own well-being.  She could feel a bomb ticking inside of him that he was always monitoring.  It made her nervous sometimes.  But she liked him a lot, and she was terrified of losing him.  She revered his mysterious (!!tempestuous!!) inner life that kept him unknowable.  He was the one who rescued her from her ordinary life, to be able to feel alive, feel anything again.

Their relationship ended as abruptly as it had started.  One Friday in June, she spoke to him on the phone.  He sounded happy.  ("He hasn't sounded this happy before.")  By Tuesday, he was gone, already left Taipei for France with his fiancé.  She was numb, unable to cry or grieve for a long time, trying to forget.

As time passed, she missed him; she fell victim to crippling pain, furiously attempting to hold on to whatever pulse or memories could be kept while chunks of who they were had vanished forever.

Harry Ugly with His Millions

 - To Buddhism -

Harry walked out of his agent’s building onto the street, smiling secretly as he felt the check in his pocket – eighty five thousand dollars. He was almost resentful of having to pay his agent Sam the fifteen percent commission of fifteen thousand dollars. But he let the thought pass, as he realized that his newest play after a long draught was a tough sell. People had forgotten how good he once was, and Sam had to work extra hard to find a buyer for his production this time.

Eighty five thousand dollars was still a sizable haul for a dried-up artist, for a piece of work that he knew in his heart was nothing but a hack job. He lost his flames long ago after a string of blockbuster successes. He made millions but lost his soul, the soul that had sustained him through all those lean years as a struggling playwright trying to make it onto the big stage. For that reason, he held on tight to the check in his pocket, ashamed and yet happy. Who knows? This could be his last paycheck, he thought. Spreading this money over the next ten years would still afford him the luxuries he had grown used to over the years.

He paused by the window of an upscale jewelry store. I could buy that pearl necklace for my wife, or for my girlfriend! In fact, I could buy the whole window, or even the store! Suddenly the pearl necklace lost its luster, seemed worthless. He saw in the glass his round and sagging face, his balding head, his sloping shoulders, his pudgy figure, his wrinkled pants, and his sad eyes. After all the successes, he thought, you still look like a failure. He moved on without looking back.

A few steps down, a good-looking woman smiled at him as he passed, “You wouldn’t be Harry See?”
“No.” He kept going, did not turn, fearing that she might stop him and begin the conversation that would be unbearable for him by now.

What would he reply to these people, who after all, at least some of them, might be his fans? “This new play is the smartest, funniest play I have ever written…” “Don’t you dare to steal from me, my money or my ideas…”

The fame and millions had taken a toll on him. The freedom to have every wish fulfilled by the millions thrown at him was not freedom at all. For a while, he tried to sneak into a movie theater in the neighborhood only after the movie had already begun to avoid public attention. That was a huge sacrifice, considering how much he would have enjoyed watching a good movie on the big screen among his fellow movie buffs. Now he could afford to buy the whole movie house all to himself; but what fun was that to watch a movie in loneliness? So he stopped going to the movie theater altogether.

Still, the temptation of fame was too alluring to resist. He remembered scouring obsessively the magazine racks in the corner newsstand for any news and pictures about him or his plays; wondering at all the airplane terminals, train stations, kitchen tables, and dental offices where people would be staring at his face on the magazine covers. He thought of growing his hair long, wearing a beard, putting on a rumpled pair of corduroy jeans to fit his artistic image, or maybe having plastic surgery to look younger to the public. But then, he thought, they won’t recognize me. Anyway, he was hooked, hooked to the trappings of public eyes.

Occasionally in his morose honesty, Harry remembered those years when he was young but not famous, sitting beside his lovely ex-girlfriend’s naked body, his notebooks spreading on the bed they shared in a summer cottage as he frantically constructed play after play about this beautiful woman of his desire. So fresh, so pure, and so rich.

Do I have anything that I really treasured that just sort of vanished? I used to have her, but now she’s gone somewhere. Where did she go, I wonder?

Now that Harry’s plays succeeded, it was almost inconceivable to make a real connection with any women he knew.

He had married his wife for quite a long time. Admittedly she was a loyal wife, suffering through his long years of struggles and depression, and now thoroughly enjoying the fruit of her investment in a theatrical genius. Yet he wished he had never married her! It was no joy to come home to the old wife who had simply grown fatter, sloppier and greedier over the years.

He had tried to seek pleasures elsewhere. Why not? He had a lot of money to burn, and boredom to kill. So he went around buying girls who would jolt his senses. At high prices, they provided him temporary releases and companionship, and they whetted his appetite for ever more exotic sexual games in the name of stimulating his senses. It worked for a while; then all the sensations became dull and even unpleasant. He tried to remember the pretty faces of the girls who had entertained him, and in each he saw nothing but calculation and look of starstruck emptiness. The whole thing was exhausting him, and he had hardly written a single note from those episodes.

In the hollow part of his heart, he questioned: Is it possible to write another play with the passion and fire that I had when I was young? And the answer was always: Thankfully I don’t have to. I have already made my millions…

As he headed downtown, he passed by the Peking Duck restaurant, an inelegant place where he had dined with Sam years ago. It would probably be empty at this hour. (No one would recognize me.) He pushed opened the red front door and saw that the bar was empty and there were two customers sitting in the restaurant part. So he took a stool at the bar. The bartender took his order without showing a sign of recognizing him.

After downing the second drink of Scotch into his empty stomach, he stood up, propped his head up, staring into the mirror behind the bar, hanging his trunk over by the neck: Harry Ugly, but a millionaire with plays running in three continents. Isn’t anybody noticing?

The Chinese bartender came over, “Excuse me. Are you okay?”
“I am Harry See.”
“I know. I recognized you. On Good Morning America, right?”
“Right.”
The bartender looked past Harry’s shoulder nodding wildly at someone behind him; then turned to Harry, “The boss invited you to have a drink on the house!”

Harry looked around and saw a Chinaman sitting behind the cash register, bowing to him lavishly. Harry smiled, and nodded back with some aristocratic satisfaction. (How refined these people are! How they love their artists! This is a great country!) He then quickly finished the drink in his hand, and ordered another Scotch.

“Excuse me,” a small round man sitting down next to him on the stool, “Are you Harry?”
“Yes,” the alcohol made him reply.
“Do you remember me? Ben Johnson.”
He must have met this fellow somewhere, sometime. “I am sorry, Ben. I can’t recall where I knew you?”
“I was your college classmate in English department.”
Harry had shut off all his college connections. But the name sounded familiar. “I have a terrible memory. I remember your name, though.”
“Come on, we were best friends for four years.”
“I believe you. I mean, I just can’t place you at this moment.”
Ben seemed a bit more at ease, “Well, you don’t look much different, except for the beard and hair. I could tell it was you in a minute.”
“What do you do?” still feeling guilty of forgetting, Harry was prepared to listen to a tale of successes.
“I run my own import-export clothing business with the Taiwanese.”
“That’s great,” Harry felt a relief. At least he was not a total failure, which could be awkward for him. “I’m glad that you’ve done well.”
“What do you do?” Ben asked.
 “I’m a writer.” He could see the pity in Ben’s eyes.
“What kind of writing do you do?” Harry’s resentment was palpable. If only I could shake off this weasel from my back, he thought.
“I write plays.”
“Really?” He still kept the pity in his eyes.
“I wrote Good Bye Plum Blossom Pavilion.”
Ben’s jaws dropped, and his skin turned red.
“And Shanghai Moon.”
The two smash hits that cracked open Ben’s face like thunderbolt. “Are you…Harry See?” he whispers.
“Yes.” Harry felt an instant gratification at seeing this poor man’s pity look turning into awe. It gave him a perverse pleasure to smother a weasel.
“I…I’ve enjoyed your shows…”

Harry stood up, closed up his coat jacket, and quickly exited the front door into the street.

A Tribute from a Fan

JinLung liked to take a stroll in Chinatown during his lunch break from his workshop in SoHo, a habit he had formed over the past year.  It wasn't that he had a particular thing to buy or place to see in Chinatown.  It was about the air, the smell, and the looks of the Chinese faces on the street, earthy, timeless, and familiar to him.

He had lived in New York City for over two decades.  He liked the city, although he still felt a little foreign here.  It was bigger and filthier than any other city he had lived before.  But it is also a unique city in the States in the sense that it is interesting and intense; a city on edge, a city that never sleeps, a city of men on foot (not in cars), a city with a big heart, a city so secure in its marginality, a city of global villages, a city so rich in its people.  To outside tourists, the New Yorkers seem to be into the world of their own, ignoring the rest of the world.  JinLung saw them differently, more or less real people living real lives, minding their own businesses, crossing each other because they had to, and occasionally losing tempers, just like the Chinese he had grown up with.  Unromantic perhaps, but real – life can be unromantic, but rich.  Where else can you observe lives more vividly than in New York? 

JinLung’s mind wandered to other metropolises’ Chinatowns he had been to.  New York Chinatown was definitely older and more content with itself: San Francisco Chinatown was fastidiously neat, new, and sterile; Paris Chinatown was barely there; Los Angeles Chinatown was too spread out, like Los Angeles.  How interesting!   Chinatowns everywhere took on the persona of the towns they inhabited.  As such, JinLung rather liked the New York Chinatown, because it reminded him the most of the cities in China – unpretentious, noisy, filthy, chaotic, colorful, warm and happy.  Just like the Chinese people in them. 

He would be lying if he weren’t hungry for the street foods while there, or he’d never been tempted by the useless junk.  Old storybooks and not-so-old antiques were among his favorites.

One afternoon in early August, during one of his treasure hunts, he spotted a faded tin plate in the back of a small junk shop near the community park.  He knew immediately what it was: a 1950s’ promotional material for household appliances.  It was a stylish thing to do then, a bit quaint now, but still charming: You put images of pretty women, movie stars, singers, models on the ugliest array of clanking pots and pans, bathtubs, or batteries to entice buyers.  They still do that today, beautiful women selling irrelevant things, cars, computers, cigarettes, except they do it more artfully now.  The plate women were from the earlier days, when the faces could be so lovely and goods so cheap (oh, what a contrast.)  It was this unusual looking woman on this ordinary looking plate that caught JinLung’s eyes: Did I know her from somewhere?  She wore a high-up chicken-nest hairdo, with paint chipped off at the hair’s edges.  Phoenix wide eyes plastered with massive black makeup, smiling ever slightly as if she knew all life’s secrets.  She stood upright in a low-cut chiffon dress showing a slim white neck.  She looked serene, mature, warm but not too flirtatious.  Isn’t she the woman of my dreams when I was a teenager, JinLung thought.  HongNan was her name.

JinLung was unsure, so he approached the shopkeeper.  “Who is this woman?  Do you know her?”

“Nobody special.  She’s been around the shop for quite some time.”  The old man answered impatiently, like a typical bored shop owner.  “You want it?  I give you for $10.”

$10 for a dream, not a bad bargain, he thought.  So he bought the plate, hoping that he was right about the woman.  HongNan - born 1932; dead 1966 from suicide; she was the biggest movie star in the 60s from Hong Kong.  She had played a lot of beauties in Chinese fairy-tale movies.  

She was all woman - grownup, mysterious, seductive, knowingly sophisticated: she wore womanhood in her sleeves like perfume, like yellow silk.  In his teens, JinLung was never impressed by the young stars of his age – they were girly, grisly, silly.  In HongNan, he discovered the high womanhood, her sultry glances and understanding smiles.  The day she died, he felt a part of him died with her.  She was real to him, adored by most as star, but worshipped by him as goddess, his very beloved lady.

It had been more than thirty years since she passed away.

That night, it was full moon.  In his tiny apartment, JinLung dozed off on the couch.  The wind was blowing cold outside.  He had the window wide open.

Past midnight, he heard someone knocking on the door, once, twice, faintly.  He got up to answer the door.  It was a petite woman standing outside.  She had lovely big eyes, and bobbed hair.  She was dressed in knee-length silk qipao, a high-neck tight-fitting Chinese costume that you don’t see many modern Chinese women wearing these days.  "Can I come in, JinLung?"  She asked in Cantonese, a southern Chinese dialect.  He hesitated for a moment, then let her in.

“You probably don’t remember who I am?”  She walked in the apartment, looking around.

"Sorry, I don’t.”

“I’m HongNan.  You bought a picture of me this afternoon.”  She turned toward him.

He couldn’t believe what he heard.  Yet, he recognized those phoenix-like wide eyes.

“Oh yes.  It was really you.  That’s incredible.” 

“Yes, it’s been a long time sitting in that musty shop.”  She sighed.

“You were a sensational actress.”  He didn’t know what else to say.  This was all a bit strange...can I be dreaming?  He thought.

“Thank you.  But fans are forgetting me,” she sighed again.  “It was my fault.  I shouldn't have left them so soon.  I was headstrong and selfish.  I want to make up…”

“How?”  How many die-hard fans like him were still around thirty years later?

“I came because I knew you still care, when you bought my picture.” 

“But why did you commit suicide in the first place?  It is still a huge mystery.”  He mustered his courage to ask.

“I’ll tell you some other time.”  She replied.  “I must go now."

"No, no.  Please stay a little longer," he pleaded.

"Would you like me to come back?”  She winked at him in her beautiful eyes.

“Yes, please do.”

“Tomorrow, I’ll be here at 5 o’clock.”

"Sure.”

HongNan exited, vanished into the nightly air, leaving JinLung dazed, disbelieving all what had happened.  "Is this my longing or my loneliness?  I need to think."  But he was too tired to think, and soon fell asleep.  In his deepest dream, he was again the young boy of sixteen, extremely shy and sensitive; and HongNan was the far-away superstar, alive, untouchable, and picture-perfect.  In those days, he would be content just staring at her pictures, drawing her slender figure, and imagining meeting her in person.  His infatuation was only revealed to Harry, another boy in his school.  The two lads would talk all day about their favorite subject, the older movie-star leading ladies with experience, intelligence, and a lust for younger men, and the willingness to let go.  He still kept in contact with Harry who now worked in the West Coast as a game software engineer.  They were both single.

In the morning, JinLung went to the office, a small company that specialized in website design.  He did a few layouts for a website he was working on.  He left work at 4:30.  On his way back to his apartment, he picked up a tin of jasmine tea, and a small fruitcake from the nearby Chinese bakery.  When he got home, HongNan was already waiting in his room.  He did not know how she got in, and didn’t want to ask.  She had a different qipao on, knee-length in indigo blue this time.

“How are you?  So glad to see you here,” he greeted her.  “I thought I had lost you.”

They talked late into the night.  HongNan told JinLung about her growing up in the fishing village of New Territory in Hong Kong; and how she was poor and the oldest of six brothers and sisters; and how she started acting in the Cantonese theater to support her family.  She told him how she was discovered during a street performance by a movie scout, and catapulted to superstardom after the release of “The Beauty of the Mountains and Rivers” in 1957, an opera featuring the southern Chinese “yellow-plum” style of folk singing; and how she had met her husband Chen Cheng during the filming of “the Dancing Millionaire”, the movie was a flop but she fell in love with her co-star.

JinLung told her about his two older brothers, both single like him, quiet, reserved and well-mannered; and of his mother who had had a hard life living through the Japanese occupation, losing her husband at a young age, and was devoted to the rearing of her three sons; and of his happy, normal childhood reading comics, watching movies, drawing cartoons and creatures, and imagining to be an artist someday; and of being painfully shy about girls, and craving for them like a lonely minstrel in search of fairies who would never love him.  He didn’t dare to tell her how crazy he was about her.

After they finished their tea and their stories, she said, “You are a sweet man.  A lot of men can be rather cruel.  You don’t seem to have a rough bone in you.  Have you ever had an affair?”

“Oh, no.  I am too shy with women.  But I would like to serve a lady someday. I just don’t see how men can be rough with the women they love.”

Then she turned toward him, stood up, balanced herself, and kissed him lightly on the cheek.  “Take care of yourself.  I’ll be back again.”  He tried to pull her closer, but she quickly slipped away, disappearing out the door. 

After she left, he poured himself another cup of tea, feeling the energy drained off him, loneliness seeping in.

She didn’t show up for a couple of days.  Then one evening, she appeared again at the apartment, this time with a paper bag of stuff.  She was radiant and elegant in another gorgeous qipao.  And, he knew he wasn’t dreaming because the hair on his neck did not stand up on seeing her. 

“I’m back, and I brought you a present.”  She was flushed with excitement.

She sat down by the table and took out a large headdress from the bag.  It was very fancy, water-crystals of peonies and rose petals fanning out to long, frilly strips of tiny pearls.  “This is what I used to wear for my movie role in ‘The Beauty of the Mountains and Rivers’.  Do you remember the story?  It was about the charming emperor stealing the heart of a poor country girl on his day out about town in plain clothes.  When she later learned of his true identity, she decorated herself to the hilt waiting for him to pick her up as bride.  But he never came.  In the end, she killed herself in shame, heartbroken, and pregnant with his child.”

“It must be very heavy, this headdress,” he was curious.

“Not really.  But it was complicated to put it on.  It used to take the makeup artist two whole hours to put up my hair and fasten the headdress.”

“You’d look splendid in that.”

“Last time I was here, I saw the Hong Kong movie catalogue book on your coffee table.  It showed me in this very headdress.  So I thought you would enjoy seeing this.”  Oh, yes, it was the book “The Movie History of Hong Kong, Hollywood of the East, 1920-1970”.

He lifted the headdress.  It was deceptively light.  Then, all of a sudden, he felt dizzy, engulfed by the glitters for one split second, as if beaming him back to her movie days.  In his mind’s eyes, he could almost see the grand movie studio and hear her singing the opera.

Whoa, this was spooky.  He put down the headdress, and came back to himself as quickly as he had left.

“How did you like it?” She asked mischievously, “You know, if you hold it long enough, it would take you back in time.”

“I see.”

“Do you like to keep this headdress?”  She was serious.

He looked at her, forever so lovely, not a day older, sitting right next to him.  He felt the urge to be young again, to live forever.  He wanted to attend to his goddess like a devout servant; to make sure that no one comes to her harm, and that she would never be forgotten; to share in her joy and sorrow; to please her and enjoy her beauty in eternity.

But he let the thought pass, “I can’t.  I don’t think I should.”  She seemed disappointed.

“However, I would like to have one of your qipaos, with the smell of your perfume.”  He uttered, barely audible, his boldest request.

She heard it, and her eyes lit up like a happy child, “That would be a deal.  You shall have it the next time,” as she cheerfully put the headdress back into the bag.

That night, she told him about her husband, Chen Cheng: How he used her and lied to her.  She was his pawn for bigger roles and larger payments in the movie world, yet he made her emotionally deprived, isolated from her loyal fans.  He was not a nice man, demanding, manipulative, controlling and seductive.  Freshly escaped from the hardships of her earlier life, she was looking for the safe harbor of love.  Alas, her choice was a deadly one, and the refuge was but a mirage - She gave pleasures to millions, but she was in pain alone by herself.  Maybe in death, she would be beyond his reach.  May be in death, she would be free.

JinLung showed her his latest artwork.  One of them was a sketch of her, from his memory of their last meeting (She appeared as a muse lost in thoughts.  The drawing was spare, sharp, and full of feelings.)

“This is lovely.”  She marveled.

“Would you accept this as a token of my thanks, for your coming by?”

She picked up the drawing and kissed him on the cheek, “Yes, I would.”  He felt her warm breath, and nothing else mattered.

That night and many nights afterwards, she kept him company.  She always came on Tuesday nights.  At first, he was as nervous as a young lad carrying a flower to his lover on the other side of the schoolyard, his hands shaking and feet unsteady.  Yet he was polite and thoughtful, always attentive to his lady's smallest wants.  His flair for aesthetics and art charmed his lady.  She brought him her old qiapo and other souvenirs, posed for his drawings, and told him stories about the stars back then - their intrigues, their comings and goings, their successes and failures, some amusing, some moving, and some quite tragic.  She knew he was fascinated with movie stars of yester years.  They gossiped about the changes in popular taste for movies and stars: Half a century ago, tall, grown women ruled the silver screens; today, unimaginably young vixens strutted their stuff on screen.

The more he learned of her, the more he liked her, her vitality and gentle kindness, and the more he was convinced of her presence (not just his wishful thinking.)

He had taken to sleeping with her qipao, and sniffing the faint, intoxicating scent, with the pleasure of a groom anticipating his bride.  “My beautiful flower, I feel your body upon me.  How can I be closer?” “I miss your soul, my long-ago love.  I don’t want to lose you again.”  While his heart was on fire, his footsteps became lighter than whimpers, afraid to scare her away.

Once, the conversations turned dark.

"How was it, dead at thirty?"  He asked her.  Her face sank.

"Death was agony.  Here I was, instantly a numb statistic.  When I first got there, I was overwhelmed with self-pity.  I expected to find sympathy, but I found none.  All I saw was thousands of others whose bodies were mangled and decayed.  They paid no attention to me - they were swept away by their own grief.  I was given a tag which read 'Suicide Victim' ". 

The day I died was an ordinary day.  It didn't matter how I took my life – The point is that I went too fast, and I took too big a chance.  All I thought was that I would be free from Chen Cheng.  The last thing I remembered I did was taking barbiturates and alcohol.  I felt a wrenching jolt inside my gut, and I heard myself screaming pain.

When I woke up, it was very quiet.  A police officer and a doctor were standing over me.  I was cold, and I couldn't feel anything.  Oh no, don't pull that sheet over my head.  I cannot be dead yet, I am only 30.  I have a show opening to go to, and I am supposed to have a baby someday.  I haven't lived yet.  I haven't loved yet.  How can I be dead?

Later I was placed in a coffin.  My parents came to identify me.  Why did they have to see me like this?  Why did I have to witness my old mommy facing my senseless death?  My poor dad, he turned to the coroner and said, 'Yes, she is our daughter.'

The funeral was the strangest experience.  I saw all my relatives and friends, and long lines of fans walking up to the casket.  They looked at me with the saddest eyes I had never seen before.  Did I mean that much to them?  I could hardly believe it.  Some fans touched the glass over my casket and sobbed as they walked by.

Oh please, wake me up!  I don't want to die!  Don't bury me.  Get me out of here.  I have a lot of living to do, people to love, movies to make, and fans to please.  I can't bear to see everyone in such pain.  No one can believe this, neither can I.

Please don't put me in the hole in the ground yet.  I promise you, Lord, if you give me one more chance, I will be the nicest person on earth.  All I want is one more chance.  Please, Lord, I am only 30."  Her voice was broken.  She was pleading to emptiness, all over again.

"You didn’t want to die after all."  He felt relieved.  "So I’m your one more chance to do it right - me, your loyal fan." 

She nodded, slightly embarrassed.

He screamed silently inside his heart, "But I don’t want to be your redemption.  I want to be your servant, to please you, to serve you.  I'm the most miserable man ever lived, for I'm in love."

On the 15^th day of the Eighth moon every year, Chinese all over the world would celebrate the end of summer with the Mid-autumn Moon Festival.  Farmers would take a break from their labor, drinking tea and snacking on moon cakes.  Poets would toast the words to the moon lady and drink themselves silly.  For centuries, Chinese told the story about the moon lady and her rabbit, working hard at pounding out a celestial concoction to bring them back to earth, to her proud, earthly husband.  If you should look closely at the moon on the magic date of lunar August 15^th, you may just catch the sight of the two shadows, the moon lady and her rabbit.

It was a special day for JinLung, because HongNan had been visiting him for one full year today.  He wanted to memorialize this special occasion.  So he came home with a box of the finest moon cakes, the kind with a yellow-yolk (a heart) in the middle surrounded by lotus-seed filling (the sweetest flesh).

She showed up at the appointed time in a black-lace floral qipao, with golden trim, ankle length, tight over her curves and slender waist, her stiletto feet strutting through the high side slits, a folded fan in one hand, and a small beaded purse under one arm. 

“You are stunning.”  He was breathless.  She smiled back in appreciation.

It was a night of brilliant stars and mother moon, tiny stories and feather-like laughs.  Finally he murmured something, “Would you share a fantasy with me - that I would be your unknown young escort who loves you simply?”

“Fantasy?”  She raised her eyebrows, her beautiful eyes radiating anticipation.

“Uh, maybe more than a little fantasy.”  He said sheepishly.

“This makes me very happy." She was gracious.

Then she came before him, leaning over, and began to kiss him earnestly.  "You are the sweetest thing I’ve ever known,” she whispered.  Her lovely mouth, red and luscious and dainty, starting to grow wider and wider to lick and touch his; her tongue, a lover’s tongue, soft and wet, insistent and clinging, sticking deeper and deeper inside his mouth to search for his.  He fell unconscious to the spell of her great tongue.  He felt himself eaten up by her, swept away by her huge seas of love, into another world.  When he drifted back to consciousness, he opened his eyes and gasped at the power of her enormous mouth, now seemed normal and in human size again.  He was speechless. 

This must be a dream that he’d found this woman, a ghost that had all the silky deliciousness of the fairest earthly ladies.  Yet her kisses were so passionate, so ferocious, and so enormous.  He was exhausted, taken with her sweet invasion, left with a sense of bliss and satisfaction.

Later, she laid down on the bed next to him, “Good night, my dear.  I love you.”  “I love you too,” he said softly.  In the dark, he savored the incredibly peaceful feeling, yet he would be hungry for more when he woke, he thought. 

In the days that followed, his head was flooded with the images of her magical mouth, her great tongue, and her beautiful face.

She showed up a few days later, looking a bit distraught.  Meanwhile, he pleaded for his lover’s kisses and great tongue, like a hopeless addict agitating for more drug.  Without complaint, she gave him the hot flush of her blooming tongue, and that was enough to shoot him to heaven, and soothe his soul.  After he regained himself, he held her hands, “What’s the matter, my dear, you are sad.”

“I’ve cheated death for far too long, to hold on to you.  It’s time for me to go.”  She said.

“You can't leave me.  I need you.” 

“I can’t fight my destiny.  I can’t escape death forever.”

“Then perhaps I should come with you.”

“You won’t like it there, down in the underworld.  How about your mother and your brothers?”

“I’ve already said my thanks to them.  I can’t go back now.”

“What do you mean?”

“Death would be better than a life of loneliness.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, absolutely.”

"Very well, I'll think about it."

Day by day, she came to visit him.  Day by day, she revealed her secrets of surviving the underworld, and the beauty of a different sort.  It wasn’t all death, silence and dread down there.  People went about forming their own families, building their circles of friends the way they would have hoped for when they were alive.  It was the second chance for most of them, to right the wrong, to be free from stereotypes, to get out and try something new.  So, most of them gave their best, got what they wanted, except for the few who had unfinished business on earth.

Before she left, she would always make sure to kiss him with her enchanted mouth.  It seemed that she was eating him a little bit at a time, like a piece of delicious desert.

On a moonless night one month later, he was waiting for her.  He had prepared himself as best as he could, giving his family and charities whatever possessions he owned, writing down instructions for disposing the remainder.

HongNan appeared as promised, delicately adorned in a long white floating qipao.  Tonight, her otherworldly loveliness was almost cathartic.  She smiled at him.  He was fixed on her glorious, bountiful mouth that he had returned to again and again.  He was excited to see her, like a hungry dog begging to be fed, trembling, panting as she drew near him.  “My dear, you have come.”  He said, as if he were destined for her all his life.

"Yes, I have come, for you.  This is the time, our time.  Are you ready?"  She held his hands.  Her voice was as soft as a breeze through the mid-summer night. 

"Then let's do it."  He said.

As she smiled at him, her mouth started to grow and expand and widen.  When it reached beyond the edge of her face, in came out the great lover's tongue, red and moist and gleaming.  The long tongue extended and stretched until it reached the floor, and then, it gently lifted him off the ground.  What happened next was too fast for him to recount.  He had only time to savor the last glance of her phoenix wide eyes, glowing enormously in the dark, before he was swept into her mouth and swallowed.  He died quickly and quietly, without a trace of pain.

In the following night, the sky in New York was lit so bright that it was like twin-moon rising.